Quotes

While we have prisons it matters little which of us occupy the cells.

Whatever is worthy to be loved for anything is worthy of preservation. A wise and dispassionate legislator, if any such should ever arise among men, will not condemn to death him who has done or is likely to do more service than injury to society. Blocks and gibbets are the nearest objects with legislators, and their business is never with hopes or with virtues.

One should respect public opinion insofar as is necessary to avoid starvation and keep out of prison, but anything that goes beyond this is voluntary submission to an unnecessary tyranny.

Clemency alone makes us equal to the gods.

Society has used the juvenile courts to create a caste system where there are throw-away people.

Kill a man, and you are an assassin. Kill millions of men, and you are a conqueror. Kill everyone, and you are a God.

To try to raise a son from inside the prison walls is a very difficult thing. But I want to say to the world my son at 16 was the one who tried the most to get me out of prison.
~Jim Bakker

Overlook our deeds, since you know that crime was absent from our inclination.

You utter a vow, or forge a signature, and you may find yourself bound for life to a monastery, a woman, or prison.

The best situation of all, and one frequently utilized, is for jails and prisons to allow volunteer ministers of all faiths to enter prisons and offer their services to the inmates who want them. That way, the religious needs of inmates are met but without government funds being spent.

The refined punishments of the spiritual mode are usually much more indecent and dangerous than a good smack.

Prisons don't rehabilitate, they don't punish, they don't protect, so what the hell do they do?

The world itself is but a large prison, out of which some are daily led to execution.

They're not supposed to show prison films in prison. Especially ones that are about escaping.

Here the great art lies, to discern in what the law is to be to restraint and punishment, and in what things persuasion only is to work.

Every instance of a man's suffering the penalty of the law is an instance of the failure of that penalty in effecting its purpose, which is to deter.

Laws do not persuade just because they threaten.

I was in prison, and you came unto me. Verily I say unto you, inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me.
~(Jesus Christ) Matthew 25:36, 40

Corporal punishment falls far more heavily than most weighty pecuniary penalty.

Concepts of justice must have hands and feet to carry out justice in every case in the shortest possible time and the lowest possible cost. That is the challenge to every lawyer and judge in America.

The worst prison is not of stone. It is of a throbbing heart, outraged by an infamous life.

The virtue of justice consists in moderation, as regulated by wisdom.

Once we are destined to live out our lives in the prison of our mind, our duty is to furnish it well.

Only free men can negotiate. Prisoners cannot enter into contracts.

When the Nazis came for the communists, I remained silent; I was not a communist. When they locked up the social democrats, I remained silent; I was not a social democrat. When they came for the trade unionists, I did not speak out; I was not a trade unionist. When they came for me, there was no one left to speak out.